A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Dear Editor, I was sickened to learn of the release of Naser Oric, the real perpetrator of the Srebrenica massacre & of Serb indignation about this..

The Serbs are absolutely & completly right on this. What Oric did was to carry out repeated attacks on villages around Srebrenica killing thousands of old men women & children (3,800 have been identified by name) since the younger men were away at war. This was genocide, pure & simple . Unlike the alleged later massacre of Oric's soldiers, for which there is virtually no credible evidence Oric's genocide is certain. Not only did NATO's senior general Marrilon testify to this at Milosevic's "trial" but Oric showed journalists videos of him beheading women & children from his very extensive home video collection. This was reported by the Toronto Star & Washington Post but not elsewhere.

By comparison the later alleged "Srebrenica massacre" of Oric's Moslem "warriors" which, unlike the primary genocide, has been massively hyped by the western media is certainly in part & probably wholly, a deliberate propaganda "big lie" (to quote Goebbels). What goes unreported is that the bodies were found near the sites of Oric's genocide & far from where they should have been if they were Moslem bodies & that ,despite massive DNA testing of them against Moslem records (but not Serb), they have overwhelming proven "unidentifiable" Add that to the statement of the ranking NATO officer at Srebrenica, Captain Schouten that " If executions have taken place, the Serbs have been hiding it damn well. Thus, I don’t believe any of it. The day after the collapse of Srebrenica, July 13, I arrived in Bratunac and stayed there for eight days. I was able to go wherever I wanted to. I was granted all possible assistance; nowhere was I stopped."

NATO & their semi-judical hirelings have deliberately released the real author of the Srebrenica massacre because they know that the propaganda lie they have told, & the press & TV have dutifully sold, for over a decade could not survive a conviction of this Nazi war criminal.

As regards the sentence- compare it with that of Dusko Tadic, accused of murdering a man's father. Defence counsel brought the alleged deceased into court to testify on his behalf, at which point the prosecution witness admitted to having lied under forceful pressure from the Bosnian Moslem secret police. Oric got 2 years, Tadic got 20.---------------------------- This was sent as a reaction to the news that NATO's Nazis have decided, after due consideration, that Naser Oric, the author of what nobody not even NATO disputes was the primary genocide at Srebrenica (& probably the only one) has been released. This was reported by the Scotsman in a minor piece to which I & a couple of others added comments in a disapprving vein (one of whom, John, commented on his own blog & clearly knows some background. Very few other papers did so though the racist filth of the BBC did online only & exercising the normal nazi censroship on what he actually did.

This went to newspapers around the UK & world. It hasn't been published by the Herald, Svcotsman, Inie or Times & I suspect others will exercise the same racist censorship. Of course the entire edifice of NATO lies over Srebrenica would fall apart if Oric's genocide was reported. We may expect the same for Gotovina, the nominal commander (US officers were the real commanders) of the Krajina Holocaust.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Holyrood Lib Dems ponder tax cut (particularly business taxes all as a way to stimulate economic growth)

As previous readers here will know I was expelled from the SLD for, among other things, calling for business tax cuts to stimulate economic growth (my Enterprise Motion). So yesterday I read this in the Scotsman

Nicol Stephen, the party's Scottish leader, is studying plans to produce a "pro-enterprise" party platform, which is also likely to include a promise to make further reductions in business rates.

Lib Dem party sources last night stressed that the plans to cut the "tartan tax" - which will cost at least Â£500 million a year - were at an early stage.

However, it is understood Mr Stephen, the deputy first minister, and Tavish Scott, the minister for transport, are both determined to see tax-cutting promises in the Lib Dems' next manifesto.

Neither Mr Stephen nor Mr Scott was prepared to say anything in public yesterday, but party sources confirmed they were looking at income and business tariffs as part of a wider package of tax plans.

The unattributed nature of this means that they are running up a flag to see if anybody salutes rather than making firm policy. They did something similar last year in regard to Nicol's loony idea of spending Â£3 billion on a Glasgow/Edinburgh bullet train (he had been on a junket to China, seetheirs's & wanted to play too), which eventually became official policy.

For 3 years I tried to get the party to even think about doing this & as a direct result was expelled on charges that such reforms arspecificallyly "illiberal" & "too right wing" to be considered. So I wonder where they got the ideas? Well OK I don't & I do claim credit.

So am I bitter. In the words of General Schmuck* - Hell, yes.

For that reason you may assume I am biased, though I don't think so, when, having claimed authorship, I now explain why it is a bad idea.

The main part of the proposal is a 2p cut in income tax. Business tax cuts which would be a more efficient targeting are a lesser part. Well after all income tax cuts are good for votes.

The real problem is how are these tax cuts to be paid for & the answer is

new taxes to offset the cost of the "tartan tax" reduction and the expense of using the parliament's tax powers for the first time.

That's right. Tax cuts paid for by new taxes. Unspecified Green taxes (a tax on plastic bags is mentioned which I can't see replacing much income tax) & more charges for recycling (as if recycling was a profit making rather than heavily subsidised activity).

This is the sort of lifting yourself up by pulling on your own bootstraps which is a sort of economics equivalent of perpetual motion (actually economics being what it is it might just work if the tax cuts were focused completely on business investment since it concentrates diffuse resources on growth, but the income tax cuts are, by definition, diffuse).

Worse. The administrative cost of this is going to be high. Firstly the cost of invoking the income tax cuts will "cost around £100 million, and there would be an administrative cost of about £60 million a year". Moreover income tax is one of the cheapest taxes to collect. Collecting an extra £500 million (the figure given) from recycling charges & plastic bags (or slightly more credible green taxes like higher fuel prices, higher cigarette prices, surcharges on electricity not produced by windmills, community charge surcharges for higher cleansing prices, parking or driving in cities surcharges etc any suggestions welcomed) would probably cost at least 20%, which in turn means higher taxes to cover the extra costs.

Thus to replace the £500 Million will cost £700 Million (the original £500M plus £60M for increased income tax administration plus Â£140M ie 20% of the extra cost in raising £700M). Good tactics. That will really stimulate the economy. This exclude the initial Â£100M to redo income tax.

The real way to encourage growth is to cut the outrageous amount of our money spent by government (54%) & direct it primarily into cutting business taxes (cutting income tax, while everybody likes it should come 2nd to building our future - though this requires some faith in the Scots people not being short term junkies, a faith I believe justified). Cut the outrageous amount of waste, don't spend £3 billion on goa railway & cut overmaning until we reach English levels, drasticly cut the £500M given to Scottish Enterpise & select a few more sacred cows for culling. That would work. Anything which isn't willing to face cutting government@s cost is just smoke & mirrors.

The article implies that this stuff was put together by Nicol Stephen & Tavish Scott. I assume they didn't ask the advice of Ross Finnie, an accountant to trade & the Executive minister called in to run things when the going gets tough (foot & mouth, fishing, water) but does not have the chiseled blondeness of Nicol (& has had a heart attack) & so is relegated to the position of Minister For Things That Happen Outdoors. They should let him tell them how to fix this.

Monday, July 03, 2006

NICOL STEPHENS ACCUSES LIB DEMS & JEWS OF WAR CRIMES

Whatever the reason it seems indisputable that the Israelis are being held to a higher standard than other nations. On Thursday's Question Time the Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen stated that Israeli reaction to the killing of 2 soldiers & the kidnapping of another by attacking a civilian power station "is a war crime under the Convention". The reasoning for this is that deliberately targeting civilians has been a war crime since Nuremberg.

Mr Stephen must be aware that during the war against Yugoslavia NATO bombers repeatedly also attacked power stations, indeed they used graphite bombs deliberately designed to short out power systems & make them unrepairable. The Lib Dem attitude to this aggressive & therefore illegal war was entirely & enthusiastically supportive. Thus Nicol has put himself in the, I believe unique position as a party leader, of saying that his party has been involved in war crimes. To be fair both Labour & the Tories have been guilty too though the SNP's hands were not bloodied. To continue being fair destroying people's electricity was hardly the most serious war crime there - the war itself, being aggressive & launched without a UN resolution was clearly a war crime & allowing of the ethnic cleansing of 350,000 & genocide of 6,000 in Kosovo after NATO took over is legally a Crime Against Humanity.

This is the second major TV appearance by Nicol. During the first one, a BBC debate on future power supplies, he made the gaff of saying that "nuclear is the easy answer" & going on to explain that it had to be stopped because otherwise the electorate would never shell out for the expensive & unreliable renewables he wants. It was apparent, when he became leader, that he was chosen more for being a photogenic blonde than for his political achievements. Such, we are told, are the demands of modern politics.

As someone who was expelled by the party Executive, under Robert Brown, for the sin of "bringing the party into disrepute" by openly challenging a previous, unsuccessful, attempt to expel me for supporting the classic liberal economic policies that have made Ireland so wealthy & saying that we need new nuclear if we are to prevent massive blackouts I will be interested to see how the leader's accusation that what they supported was a war crime will be said to improve their reputation. Yours Faithfully Neil CraigPS I have deliberately put the older stuff in the last 2 paragraphs so that they can be edited out if you think I am being to unkind, or long winded. I hope you don't have to.-----------------------This was sent to a number of Scottish & UK newspapers, the popular ones getting a shortened version with the last 2 paras removed. It wasn't published by the Scotsman or Herald - I don't know about the others but am not entirely hopeful. I also sent this to the party. No doubt I will be able to use it again.:

As you will be aware a Mr Nicol Stephen representing himself as a member of the SLD appeared on Question Time on Thursday. During this he said that attacking civilian's electricity supplies was "a war crime under the convention". As he must be perfectly well aware the LDs enthusiasticly supported precisely this action during the War to Help the KLA Commit Genocide. Mr Stephen has therefore accused the LDs of involvement in war crimes.

Assuming that the LDs do not appreciate being accused of war crimes he has certainly engaged in "bringing the party into disrepute" & must thus be expelled. The only possible alternative would be that the party is unashamed of participation in war crimes.

I look forward to the action of the party executive. No thanks for bringing this to your attention are required

Sunday, July 02, 2006

ESA THE EU FUNDING SPACE

Recently, on another blog I said that if NASA gave up 10% of its budget to the X-Prize Foundation or ESA gave all of its in the same cause we would quickly have a well developed industrialised space community. I have reported on the X-prize system previously.

At the time I had no idea of the size of the ESA budget & had assumed from the fact that it hasn't yet got a single man into space a major satellite presence or indeed anything much beyond a few space probes it had fairly token expenditure too.

Further checking shows I was wrong.

The budget of ESA was announced as E2.977 billion for 2005 (a ten percent increase on 2004) and for 2006 is estimated at E2.904 billion.[18] A large part of ESA's budget is invested in ESA's launch vehicles that are currently the most expensive part of ESA's activities (Twenty-two per cent of the budget goes into launch vehicles; human space flight is second in budget expenditures).......

Comparison with NASAIn comparison with NASA's budget of sixteen billion dollars (E13 billion), ESA's budget of E3 billion superficially looks considerably less. However in order to make a true comparison on funding levels between the U.S. and those European nations involved with the ESA, more factors have to be considered:

Unlike the US, many European nations maintain both ESA and national space agencies (see below). These national space agencies do have considerable budgets provided for scientific research and joint projects with ESA. For instance, the German Aerospace Center (German acronym DLR) has a separate budget for 2005 of E760 million [6] and the French CNES's own budget for 2004 was E1.3 billion. Taking the budgets of all national space agencies together and adding them to ESA's figures would more than double the amount spent by the United States for space related activities. Some highly expensive European space projects are not within ESA's budget, such as the Galileo global positioning system. Funding for this E4 billion project comes from special agreements between EU members.

So ESA's budget is in theory a quarter & in practice about half of that of NASA. Considering that space enthusiasts generally consider NASA is getting an awful lot of paper & very little space travel for it's money ESA's achievement of zero space travel is remarkable even by the standards of the EU. Purists will note that ESA is not technically an EU organisation it is merely that thay have an overwhelming overlap of members but in practice the ethos is the same.

The comparison with the Chinese & Russian achievements is clear

In terms of absolute cash budget size, the ESA has the second largest budget after NASA, with the Japanese JAXA having annual funds of $1.6 billion at its disposal taking the third place, followed by the ambitious Chinese Space Agency with around $1 billion and the Russian Space Agency which incurred a considerable boost in funding in 2006 with an annual federal budget of $800-900 million

How much of this comes from the UK? This turns out to be a surprisingly difficult question to find an answer to. The best I can comes from the ESA site

Where do ESA's funds come from?

ESA's mandatory activities (space science programmes and the general budget) are funded by a financial contribution from all the Agency's Member States, calculated in accordance with each country's gross national product. In addition, ESA conducts a number of optional programmes. Each Member State decides in which optional programme they wish to participate and the amount they wish to contribute.

How big is ESA's budget?

ESA's budget for 2006 is an estimated E2904 million. The agency operates on the basis of geographical return, i.e. it invests in each Member State, through industrial contracts for space programmes, an amount more or less equivalent to each country's contribution.

How much does each European spend on ESA?

European per capita investment in space is very little. On average, every citizen of an ESA Member State pays, in taxes for expenditure on space, about the same as the price of a cinema ticket. In the United States, investment in civilian space activities is almost four times as much.

On this basis we are talking about someyhing like £350 million ($600M or E450). This seems to be somewhat contradicted by the Wikipedia article which says "In 2005, the three largest contributors, together funding two thirds of ESA's budget, are France (29.3%), Germany (22.7%) and Italy (14.2%)" since our GNP is almost exactly the same as that of France & larger than Italy's but I shall take that figure.

The question is could we do better with this money & the answer is unquestionably. The UK alone is 3/4 the size of the Russian & half that of the Chinese. Furthermore, since cutting edge space stuff is high tech & we are undoubtedly technologically ahead of China & probably of Russia we should theoretically be able to match them, at least.

Assuming, hopefully, that a $10 billion (£6 billion) X-Prize would get us to the Moon in 10 years Britain could pay for it from our ESA share +60% (including interest). Of course if it took longer it would cost less (if nobody gets there we have saved the lot obviously). The alternative is that 10 years from now we will still be a minor partner in ESA, an organisation still sitting on a launch pad hopeing someday to be able to a man into space, while being bypassed by the US, China, Russia, Japan India & Singapore.

In 2001 the Scot Lib Dems asked around constituencies for a "blue skies" idea that would make an innovative conference debate without committing themselves to anything expensive & I suggested they offer a £20 million X-Prize amortised over 49 years for the first Scottish vehicle to soft land on an asteroid. Part of the point of such a prize is that it costs nothing if it doesn't work & in either case is likely to get satelite manufacturers considering setting up here.